New York Times, Thursday, October 22, 2015

Imagine for one moment that it's finally spring in your neck of the woods. The sun is shining and life is good. You're driving in your car, windows down, music blaring, when suddenly ... WHAM! You drive into an axle-busting, teeth-jarring pothole that snaps you out of your reverie and back to reality. Such was the inspiration this past spring for today's puzzle and my crossword interpretation of driving into a pothole — with C-A-R dropping down one block on the "A" (into an imagined pothole of sorts) and then coming back up to the row it was originally on.

Two options I considered while constructing the grid were to have C-A-R spelled as R-A-C, as though the car was traveling forward in the phrase from left to right, or to have the letters C-A-R span two words. However, I finally decided that the theme would be too difficult to suss out so I used two-word phrases that contained the word CAR in either the first or second word of the phrase.

Lastly, I found a fun tidbit of info while I was cluing. The inclusion of former New York Senator, Al D'Amato, at 16-Across was totally by coincidence, not knowing that his nickname was "Senator Pothole" while he was in office!

CARs hidden within themers, falling into "POTHOLES." I totally missed Tracy's intention though. I thought the "A" just disappeared into the black square in the middle of each phrase. Glad I read her note, understanding that the "A" actually dropped down a row! A bit confusing, but it can sort of work either way.

Nice choice of themers. CRÈME CARAMEL is delicious, DALE CARNEGIE's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" has sold millions of copies, and OSCAR NOD is a jazzy phrase. The only one I wasn't sure of was APOTHECARY'S SHOP — Google gives a ton of hits without the ‘S, and very few with. APOTHECARY SHOP is only 14 letters, so it wouldn't serve as a perfect central revealer of a 15x puzzle, but to me, it's SO much better than APOTHECARY'S SHOP. Going to a 14x15 grid would have allowed it.

A crossword breaking symmetry conventions without good reason tends to irk me. Check out the location of POTHOLES and OSCAR NOD — not symmetrical! One thing that could have been done: placing POTHOLE in the center, and then A LA CARTE or BACCARAT opposite OSCAR NOD. Would have made for perfect symmetry.

Check out those upper right and lower left corners; big chunks of white space. I don't often leave 6x5 open spaces in my grids, because they're tricky to fill cleanly and snazzily. Tracy does a pretty good job with them, working in good stuff like EN BLOC and CHOO CHOOS, but the plural ARETHAS is still gluey to me even with the save in the "___ Best" clue. BETELS also feels a bit wonky — BETEL NUTS, not BETELS, yeah?

I love Japanese food, but UNADON didn't float into memory. TOTIE and SNELL not only give the puzzle an old-school feel, but those crossings with UNADON will be a killer for some solvers.

I prefer the original way I thought of the black squares as the potholes — the visual of the "A" dropping down one row didn't work nearly as well for me; not really evoking the image of a POTHOLE. Still, a fun solve, albeit a few bumps in the road.